The targeting of Russian blogger Aleksei Navalny

The trial
of Aleksei Navalny is coming to an end at the Leninsky District Court in
the river city of Kirov, 500 miles northeast of Moscow. Navalny, a charismatic
37-year-old lawyer, was propelled to fame through his activities as an
anti-corruption blogger, activist, and a leader of Russia's opposition movement.
Most recently, he pledged to compete in future presidential
elections, and sought registration to run in the Moscow mayoral election. Both
his activities as a blogger and his budding presidential ambitions have earned
him the attention of Russian authorities eager to eliminate any opposition that
would shake the political status quo.

Navalny
has been exposing corrupt deals in the highest ranks of the political power
structure. And investigating
powerful interests in Russia can earn someone all kinds of unwanted attention--from being harassed and threatened, to being audited and
prosecuted, to getting attacked and even killed.

Navalny initially examined corruption through his blog on the popular platform
Zhivoi Zhurnal (Live Journal) and through social media. His followers number
in the many thousands. Using his position as a minority stockholder in the
state energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft and in Russia's second largest
bank, VTB, to seek transparency, Navalny openly challenged the companies'
management.

In 2008,
for example, Navalny publicly questioned why the biggest part of
Russian oil was being exported and sold in European markets by a company
founded by a close friend of Vladimir Putin. Two years later, the blogger went
after the state-controlled oil company Transneft, which had said it had made charitable
donations of more than 7 billion rubles in the year 2007, the business
newspaper Vedomosti reported. When Navalny
asked the company to identify the recipients of those donations, Transneft ignored
his inquiry. Navalny then approached major Russian charities for information on
their grantors in 2007, and, as it turned out, none had received money from
Transneft, local reports said. Because of Navalny's inquiries, Transneft was
subjected to an official audit. Even though results of that audit were made
secret, Navalny had rocked the boat with his inquiries, showing that the powerful
were not entirely immune from public scrutiny.

In
2010, building on the popularity of his blog, Navalny started a Web-based anti-corruption
platform called RosPil--a public repository of tips and evidence of
violations within the state procurement system. The project has since been
likened to WikiLeaks. RosPil reports have prompted civil servants to remove
information about questionable tenders and business contracts from the public
space. Its reports have also resulted in the cancellation of dubious tenders
and the resignations of their sponsors, news reports said.

As Navalny's
popularity grew, so did authorities' attention to his activities. But it was
not until he became the impromptu leader of December
2011 opposition rallies--when he roused thousands of his Twitter followers to
gather in the streets to protest alleged rigging of parliamentary
elections--that his persona gained national dimensions. The current criminal
case against him is widely recognized as politically motivated and retaliatory--launched
to eliminate Navalny's chances for a political career and, in particular, of
becoming an alternative to
Putin.

The
case started when Navalny began examining the activities of Aleksandr Bastrykin,
head of Russia's Investigative Committee, the federal agency assigned to the
country's most serious crimes.

In
July 2012, the blogger accused Bastrykin of having residential
and commercial property holdings in the Czech Republic. As a senior official
with access to top state secrets, Bastrykin would be going against Russian norms
by holding property in a NATO country. Navalny published documents and a statement from Czech authorities in
support of the allegations. Bastrykin has denied having any improper foreign
holdings.

In
addition, Navalny criticized Bastrykin for threats the investigator made against
Sergey Sokolov, deputy editor of the Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta, in June 2012.

Bastrykin
apologized for the threats he made against Sokolov, but he lashed out at
Navolny by ordering subordinates to restart an embezzlement
case
against the blogger. (The case had previously been closed after investigators
had found no evidence of wrongdoing on Navalny's part.) The allegations stemmed from Navalny's
pro-bono work in the Kirov region, where in 2009 he was acting as a volunteer aide
to the regional governor. Prosecutors now say that, back in 2009, Navalny had
defrauded a local state-owned company, KirovLes, of hundreds of thousands of
dollars when Navalny allegedly made KirovLes managers sell 16 million rubles worth
of timber at below-market prices. This charge was not only denied by Navalny but also by the Kirov regional governor who testified as a prosecution
witness.

That
the criminal charges against Navalny are motivated by his anti-corruption
activities is hardly a secret. Bastrykin's own spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said
as much in an April interview. "If a person tries with all his strength to attract attention, or if I
can put it, teases authorities -- 'look at me, I'm so good compared to everyone
else' -- well, then interest in his past grows and the process of exposing him
naturally speeds up," The New York Times quoted Markin as saying.

"This
case is political retaliation against [my] reporting on corruption," Navalny
said addressing the Kirov court, Novaya
Gazeta reported. He said the case was
a means to distract him from his ongoing anti-corruption investigations,
including some involving Putin's friends. Navalny accused the
authorities of using state-controlled television for broadcasting false
information about him and his activities so they can vilify him in front of
voters. "This case pushes me out of the legal political field since citizens ever
convicted of grave crimes are banned from running for office," Navalny said in court.
"I plead not guilty and I am convinced that after this trial--no matter what the
verdict--my innocence will be apparent to all."

In
his comments before court in Kirov on Friday--after hearing prosecution's
demands that he be jailed for six
years
in the embezzlement case--Navalny again denounced the case against him as a plot
to airbrush him from the public space and stop his anti-corruption activities.
He also tried to rouse his thousands of followers. "I declare that my colleagues and I will do
all we can to destroy this feudal system made in Russia, destroy this system of
power, under which 83 percent of the country's wealth is in the hands of half a
percent of the population," Navalny said in
court as reported by Reuters. "Anyone who stands on the sidelines will just be helping the
disgusting feudal system which sits like a spider in the Kremlin, the 100
families who are sucking the blood out of Russia."

The
verdict in Navalny's case is expected later this month.

[Milashina reported from Moscow.]

Elena Milashina is an award-winning, investigative journalist with Novaya Gazeta and a Moscow correspondent for CPJ.

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